Inspiration

Inside the LHC

Particle physicists study the fundamental particles of the universe and the forces that govern them. They research things like dark matter and anti-matter. They work with mathematical equations and massive machines called particle accelerators.
It all sounds like the stuff of science fiction movies.

The Hugest, massivest most ginormous experiment in the world…

The Hugest, massivest most ginormous experiment in the world… is at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). This particle accelerator, is around 100m underground, beneath Switzerland and France. Physicists use it to study the smallest known particles – the fundamental building blocks of all things. Two beams of subatomic particles travel in opposite directions inside the circular accelerator, gaining energy with every lap. The two beams collide head-on at very high energy. Teams of physicists from around the world sift through all the data; bump up the energy a notch and then do it all again!

Did you know?

Scientists from across Australia work on the ATLAS experiment. ATLAS itself has over three thousand physicists from 174 universities in 38 countries.

The ATLAS experiment looks at the remains of high-energy proton-proton collisions that occur in the Large Hadron Collider.

The ATLAS detector is 46 metres long, 25 metres high 25 metres wide and weighs 7,000 tonnes. It has six different detecting subsystems and a huge magnet system that bends the paths of charged particles for momentum measurement.